

HitFilm 2 Ultimate also integrates with Sony Vegas Pro 12. It works pretty well, don’t get me wrong, but at the moment it won’t make you ditch your Adobe Creative Cloud account, if you are lucky enough to have one. While these effects are a great value considering they are included in a full-feature NLE, this tool is not really a replacement for After Effects or your compositing software. Without purchasing additional plug-ins or scripts inside of HitFilm 2 Ultimate you get a true 3D Particle Simulator, an array-based particle engine (they call Atomic Particles) a very useful set of Lights and Flares a pretty sweet 3D gunfire set (think 3D muzzle flashes) blood spray 3D extruded text color correction tools an advanced keying and extraction library of effects the ability to add 2D and 3D cameras lights with shadows, depth of field and motion blur and even 3D model importing (.obj. The best part is you have the NLE, or “Editor,” tab next to the composite tab in the timeline (almost like a tabbed web browser). If you want to create a VFX shot or composite shot you click the “Make Composite” button above the timeline and you are quickly in composite mode. There are no track limitations, you can trim clips pretty easily, and even directly control volume and opacity in the timeline. In NLE mode you have many of your standard shortcuts and abilities that you would see inside any of the major NLEs. Think about HitFilm like Adobe Premiere and After Effects: they are connected by a bridge with the only difference being that HitFilm works inside of itself instead of having to open a secondary application. Once inside your project you can add media, create a sequence, even begin adding effects and composite shots.

The project frame sizes don’t dictate your composite shot frame sizes, which have their own properties.
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Once you download and open up HitFilm 2 Ultimate you choose what you want your project frame rate and frame size to be - you can go up to 4K. To be honest this is really what captured my attention - a sub-$400 NLE/compositor that comes bundled with a planar tracker that is widely regarded as a staple in the industry? I thought I had better pay attention. The Mac-and Windows-based HitFilm 2 Ultimate costs just under $400 and includes the powerful planar tracking Mocha 3D camera-solving engine from Imagineer. In the second part, I touch on the HitFilm Plug-in Collection library, which takes the tools from HitFilm 2 Ultimate and places them inside many other post toolsets. In the first part of this review I will focus on HitFilm 2 Ultimate, an all-inclusive NLE, compositor and VFX constructing tool. That’s why I thought it was valuable to give FX Home’s offerings a try. Sometimes that on-the-way up indie filmmaker, or editor working side jobs, doesn’t have the financial freedom to subscribe to Adobe’s latest Creative Cloud products, purchase Avid Media Composer, or even subscribe to Red Giant’s Universe - not to mention Video Copilot Element3D, Boris Continuum Complete 9 - and the list goes on and on.
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When I contacted them about reviewing their HitFilm Ultimate software I discovered they had just released a set of plug-ins for many of today’s leading VFX and NLE products, including Adobe’s Premiere Pro and After Effects, Apple’s FCP X and Motion, and Sony’s Vegas. That is where FXHome’s HitFilm 2 Ultimate comes in. In addition, we all know that the traditional “editor” role is being superseded by the “editor/VFX/compositor” role, so the more you know - whether you are just starting out or a veteran learning something new - the more valuable you become.Īll of this has left me very interested in seeing an offering that combines editing, VFX and compositing in one package. It interests me because recently I’ve been doing more YouTube-based work and side projects, and many of my industry friends have that budget-strapped “passion project” they are working on. Over the past few months, I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about what FXHome is doing with its products.
